The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books. It's about as perfect as a book can get, in my opinion at least.

Hmmmmm, it is getting more interesting as i get into it... the start just seems rather directionless, but maybe i'm judging to hastily.

Judging a book by the first chapter has always been my problem. I've learned to forge ahead and if I'm not hooked by the middle of the book that's when I usually put it down or decide to just finish it. Especially if the book is highly recommended I attempt to finish it even if it doesn't suck me in right away.

Started Roald Dahl's 'Going Solo', which is one of his autobiographical books. I'm reading it because a friend recommended it and i always greatly admired his work when i was younger. It seems like it's going to be very light reading, but amusing enough.

I'm reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. The premise sounded interesting. A girl living in a enclosed village surrounded by a world devastated by a zombie apocalypse, but as I'm reading further along, it's starting to sound like Twilight with zombies. Here's a quote:

Even though it's dead of winter she still smells like sunshine.

Oh well, I guess I'll read it anyway since I don't like to start a book and not finish it.

It's probably the most misunderstood and brilliant book of its time. The public wasn't ready for it.

I'd really like to know what this is, since I respect both of your opinions on literature, but I can't find any information about it at all. Is this some kind of in-joke I missed?

Haha. A few years ago my friend Jack and I took up the challenge of seeing who could write the worst detective novel ever. We each ended up writing three novels. And those two trilogies were really, really, hilariously bad.

Mine was called The Morgan Trilogy. I still have the document on my computer so here's a sample chapter:

Booked months in advance of their pregnancies, haha! so whose trilogy was deemed the worst?

I believe Jack wrote the absolute worst thing in existence... I'll let the first chapter of his first book speak for itself.

MONDAY

The day I was told about my first job, could you believe it, was my first day, as I smoked my third BigWig cigarette in a row. The filters were infused with extract of syrup, and so tasted even sweeter than most sweets would taste.
Tarrigan was his, the detective, which is to say my name, which is Tarrigan. Arthur Tarrigan. A rookie, working his way up the ranks and not yet cut my teeth on a really meaty case. This was all about to change in just a few minutes. But in that short space of time, a sense of complete ease was established, and my troubles all tumbled in at once.
Howards came in, smelling a little like onions that were a day or two bad. He looked like a walrus, something that would describe him even better if a lost walrus got into an onion patch. Furthermore, he looked very much like an uncle that gives all his inheritance to your little sister despite the fact that she’s clearly a whore, and actually you had some very big ideas for that money but that’s the kind of guy Jacob was, always putting you down and saying you were a queer in front of your father, and your father took this literally and would call you it as he lashed you with his belt, and Clara sits in the corner giggling the whole time, and it all got worse from there, that’s when you became washed up and oh just when Jacob doesn’t leave you that money your wife leaves you for some chink from Korea even though they apparently have small pricks which just rubs salt in the wound, doesn’t it?
Howards was eating a food. He ate the rest and threw the rubbish on the floor even though a bin was right next to him.
“TARRIGAN!” he screamed.
“Yes, sir?” I asked, eager for my first assignment.
“Tarrigan, you have a murder to solve. That restaurant critic who writes for The Daily Archangel has been found dead. Same as all the others.”
“Oh no!” I cried. It was him again. The Easter Bunny took people and killed them, but in a way that is different from other crimes. Tarrigan could use a BigWig right now and remembered they were cheaper than most cigarettes on the market, and had a good roast of tobacco in each glorious stick.
Tarrigan had an office, generally very brown. He had a typewriter because pens got lost easily. So like a human life, he thought poetically, because he was very intellectual. Most detectives are plain hard-boiled, but he had an artistic side, and that’s what made him irresistible to the opposite sex of women.
Tarrigan looked at the floor and saw Howards’ rubbish. “Bastard,” he said in anger, but Howards did not hear this because he had left the room eight minutes before.

Tarrigan arrived at the crime scene, where yellow tape had been used so that ordinary people wouldn’t come and mess things around. The corpse was there.
The face was spongy and his yellow hair looked like a little poodle lying on a bald man’s head, but he knew that was ridiculous. With a slight bit of amusement, he noticed the victim had turned the colour of prawns.
Incidentally, the murdered man was named Vladimir Flossie, the local homosexual who worked for the newspaper, the one who writes about restaurants and how good the foods they make is. Or at least he did. He’s died now.
“Okay boys, what ya got for me?” asked Tarrigan. He didn’t want to seem too fresh-faced, and so had put a BigWig in his mouth for an appearance of manliness. The evening sunlight was warm but was beginning to go cold instead.

The cop answered him. “Looks like the Easter Bunny strikes again, sir, just like all the others.”
Tarrigan must break the ice. “What, you mean the actual Easter Bunny did this?” All the boys cracked up and laughed hard, as he knew they would. He was funny, and this one had really convinced them that he was an okay sort of guy (because the Easter Bunny is actually the name of the killer).
The Easter Bunny was actually the name of the killer. Not his real name probably, Tarrigan had deduced, but his alias. He called himself that and would capture a victim, and spend the next seven days holding them prisoner. Someone would disappear on Monday, and be found dead that very Sunday. And next to the dead corpse? An Easter egg, which the policemen had eaten half of on this occasion.
“Any leads, guys?” asked Tarrigan.
“No, we haven’t got any leads, very sorry,” said a different policeman this time; the other had gone to the toilet.
Tarrigan wore a hat, and he reached up to adjust it, because it was beginning to slip. Flossie was an okay guy…why him? Why anybody? It was all very deep. He had not been briefed for this kind of thing at detective school, and was an inexperienced rookie, but somehow knew he was the only one who could solve the case. And it might change him more than he knew. Alternatively it might not affect him at all, or only a small amount. These were three possibilities.
Tarrigan had another BigWig, and instantly felt better. He had always approved of a smoking lifestyle, and approved of the approaching vote on whether the age should be lowered, and decided that he could make a difference by writing to his elected senator.
“Detector Tarrigan!” a young fresh-behind-the-eyebrows kid ran up and spoke more words.
“A young boy has been kidnapped; his name is Buckley Fibonacci.”
Tarrigan wasn’t happy, but instead grew angry. This time the Easter Bunny had gone too far. Everyone’s killed an adult, but children are another matter.
He turned into the sunset and shouted into the streets of Palmeida.
“Easter Bunny, your days are almost finished! Tarrigan’s on the case!”

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